Sunday, July 15, 2012

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

So I was in the metro the other day and I see this girl sitting in front of me. She is maybe about 17 - 20 years old, sitting with a nerdy looking guy. Nothing too out of the ordinary except she seemed to be packing two Smith and Wesson 9 mm police issue semi- automatics. Yes, she definitely is. One in an under arm carry position - perfect to hide under a suit jacket, and another strapped to her leg.

This may be no problem in Texas - although two hand guns is kind of excessive even there. But I do know that in L.A. there would be a major problem if she encountered our friendly neighborhood LAPD (police). They really don't like people walking around with very real looking - but fake - guns. Actually, they tend to shoot people waving those around.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Hey, I saw this O'Reilly factor segment on the Spanish Breast Feeding Doll and I don't remember any "Rage" or any talk about the doll "Inciting Pedophelia". I did hear them say that perhaps six year old girls should not be thinking about breast feeding and maybe they should be little girls first. Besides, I thought it was sexist to train all little girls to be mothers?

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Interesting Article in the New York Times. Pretty right on I'm afraid - and it has been like this for as long as I can remember. Employment laws meant to "protect the worker" have ended up screwing young people. Employers won't hire because they can't fire anyone if the business climate changes. At the same time, everyone runs around obsessing about the "permanent job" a concept that has never existed in the U.S. save some government employees - and that is changing too.

I like what this guy says regarding pensions, healthcare and what will happen when Spain's low birthrate continues:

“What we have is a Ponzi scheme,” said Laurence J. Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University and an expert in fiscal policy. He said that pay-as-you-go social security and health care were a looming fiscal disaster in Southern Europe and beyond. “If these fertility rates continue through time, you won’t have Italians, Spanish, Greeks, Portuguese or Russians,” he said. “I imagine the Chinese will just move into Southern Europe.”

Friday, December 3, 2010

I know it will never happen. There is no way Zapatero has the cashews, but he should pull a Reagan and fire all the air traffic controllers. They should be thankful they have a job.

For anyone who is not, shall we say .... OK, as old as me, in 1981 the air traffic controllers in the US tried to pull this same stunt. Reagan gave them 48 hours to return to work and when they didn't he fired 11,000 striking controllers. They hired new people, they used the military to fill in, etc. and it all worked out.... except for the guys who got fired.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

I don't see any good coming from Spain's Historical Memory Law, the one that literally looks for the buried bodies from the past. A lot of nasty shit went down during the civil war - on both sides. Now that PSOE is in power, they are looking for all the nasty stuff that Franco did. As soon as PP gets back in there, will they start looking for the nasty stuff the communists did on behalf of the Republic?

If I am reading El Roto correctly, and that usually is not an easy task, it seems he also doesn't think the wounds from the war last through the generations.

Maybe it's time to, if not forgive or forget, time to move on and solve some present problems?

Saturday, April 17, 2010

It seems like such a simple thing to do. Let's say I'm a Spanish advertising executive and I have a great idea building on Obama's famous campaign slogan, "Yes We Can", and oh yeah, I really don't speak English - I just think I do. Why wouldn't I run my idea past a couple of native speakers? In fact, why aren't there native speakers on staff of my advertising firm if I am selling English language ads?

We all know that this used to happen all the time in Spain, the English on commercials, bill boards, t-shirts, etc. just isn't quite right, but in 2010, on a big ad campaign, this still happens?

What's funny about this story is the supposed English language expert from the Complutense University tries to correct the awkward "Yes We Want!" slogan and she still gets it wrong...

They could have found any American student on the street or Brit in a pub, to tell them that the correct response to, "We want to learn another language!" is... "YES WE DO!"